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Do you remember the 2016 Republican presidential primaries? Expressions of disgust and derision for upstart outsider Trump among the party establishment and clamoring candidates were widespread. My, how times have changed. Initial faux principled “anything but Trump” stances dissembled into fake adulation and obsequious pandering by congressional Republicans to an increasingly erratic fake president.

Henchman after henchman fell to indictments by the special prosecutor. Convictions and cooperation agreements correlated with outside evidence of Trump agents’ multiple contacts and financial dealings with Russian oligarchs, and intelligence agents, and international money-laundering banks (especially Deutsche Bank). U.S. intelligence agencies had warned of Russian attempts to penetrate U.S. election databases; Russian bots and trolls deployed to Facebook and Twitter. Putin’s evil is so much more sophisticated than Trump’s narcissistic bravado that it became a national embarrassment.

Republican politicians refused to allow evidence or testimony to enter intelligence or judiciary hearings. They just repeated the “no Russian collusion” mantra, even as grand juries handed down indictments of Russian agents and their American contacts associated with Trump. ‘Pay politically to play financially’ reigned supreme as rewards for cooperating with corruption piled up and those facing reelection avoided political punishment by the nastiest elements of the Trumpist white nationalist base.

Personal Reasons for Public Irrationality

Well, of course, there are reasons why these politicians put away any principles or preferences they previously proclaimed, including basic Republican values and policy principles, such as fiscal responsibility. Just look at the rewards and punishments involved. Huge tax windfalls for wealthy senators, representatives, and their corporate sponsors rewarded submission to the petulant whims of the sociopathic narcissist. Trump’s tax bill gave away hundreds of billions to the biggest corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Mitch McConnell’s pockets got their share.

The threat of being “primaried” by aggressive PAC-funded attacks by the Trumpist base in upcoming campaigns certainly got the attention of Republican senators and representatives up for reelection in 2020. They might have considered a principled stand against executive usurpation of the constitutional authority of Congress over government spending, but not under that kind of threat. Many found the false assertion of a “national emergency” as cover for commandeering funds designated for military projects both repugnant and blatantly unconstitutional. Yet, they buried their principles to secure their personal political position.

A few voted in support of the bill to overturn the proclaimed “national emergency,” mostly out of fear that the precedent could result in a future Democratic president pulling the same stunt to achieve some progressive purpose, such as funding the hated Green New Deal. That is not the art of the deal; it is extortion. It is not that such tactics are rare in Washington politics. Nor is it simply a matter of traditional “gridlock” in the national legislature.

Pathology of Policy

When a narcissistic sociopath “makes policy,” you can be sure that the origin and intent have to do with self-aggrandizement, not the public interest. I have not fact-checked the story that Trump’s obsession with “the wall” began when campaign aides suggested it as a way to make him remember to mention the “threat” of immigration. But it fits the profile. The meme took off and he happily continues to exploit it.

Generating fear of the other is a classic tactic of would-be dictators and tyrants. So is endless repetition of the “big lie.” The flow of illegal immigrants across the southern border has steadily decreased for a long time. Most drug smuggling occurs at the biggest ports of entry. Would-be terrorists from the Middle East have boarded airliners in Europe or elsewhere with false documents, headed for major American cities.

So, what’s with the wall? Its basic function is to generate fear and hatred to distract from the damage done to the nation by kleptocratic corruption at the very top – a classic tactic of tyrants.

The misogynist racist good ol’ boys (well, rich old white men) are out in force now. Their hateful ridicule targets any outspoken woman who happened to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in the midterm elections.

Alexandria Octavio-Cortez, dubbed AOC, the celebrity underdog who handily beat the old white male incumbent Establishment Democrat, is the iconic target of their spite. How dare she challenge their comfortable corporate feed trough? How dare she expect their super-rich handlers to pay their fair share of income taxes?

Tax the Rich?

The “extreme” marginal rate of 70% on the highest segment of the excessive earnings of the wealthiest Americans would be lower than that charged in the 1950s, when the Americans people (not just the rich) prospered more than any time before or since. GOP-driven (Democrat accepted) tax reductions for the wealthy have stifled economic growth and driven up public debt during every presidency from Reagan to Trump.

The progressive income tax scheme @AOC proposed is a bit lower than Nobel Prize-winning economist Peter Diamond calculated would be optimal – not too much, not too little – for the richest Americans to contribute their fair share to a healthy economy. She offends on several counts: her gender, her brown skin, her policy recommendations that challenge both patriarchy and plutocracy, and the shock of her demands for social, economic, and climate justice. On top of it all, like her colleagues, she just won’t “sit down and shut up.”

Patronize the Pantsuits?

And they expect her not to demand that children be healthy and well educated too, and that the Trumpist outlaw ICE-MEN return the children they kidnapped from their asylum-seeking parents. What next?

Oh, yes, these brash new representatives want a Green New Deal too. Why those anti-oligarchy democratic “socialists”! (Oh, is that still a dirty word?) They don’t even want to protect the plundering plutocrats from the ravages of facing up to climate chaos?

Oh, maybe they just don’t like white pantsuits, or women’s suffrage for that matter. That would go 10x for any woman wearing a headscarf, unless of course it was a gingham print and meant only as an accent for that beehive doo that might MAGA! (Remember the beehive? We’re talking 1950s here. They were as big as the tailfins on a 1959 Chevy.)

What these ol’ codgers really hate is an uppity woman who has brown skin, is even smarter than she is pretty, can easily outsmart them, and just “don’t know her place”. “Whoa there, young filly! Back in the kitchen with them barefoot brats!” That avalanche of smart progressive women of color entering the chambers of the political good ol’ boys club is just more than their privilege-addled brains can process.

Fascists in Victim’s Clothing

I never could quite understand why so many people confound the Jewish people with the state of Israel. Many people I’ve met around the world love Americans and America, but not its imperious government. I know of no nation-state in this world that is so pure and good that we should all declare it off limits to political, humanitarian, or policy criticism of any kind.

It was the Jewish people who suffered Nazi terror, not the state of Israel. I feel equally outraged by the ruthless violence of Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet, Netanyahu, and others too. But, any time someone criticizes the genocidal treatment of the Palestinian people, they are accused of supporting Hamas and terrorism. Nation states are the problem, not their people.

Go Figure. Well, you don’t have to figure much. U.S. politicians are terrified that someone might accuse them of being anti-Semitic. Closet racists often proclaim, “I am not a racist.” Same with closet anti-semites. Closet fascists claim to “bring democracy to the world” with state of the art military hardware. Too many Americans remain blind to nativist racism, even now when Trumpery has green-lighted its open expression.

I would suggest an analogy here. So many victims of abuse by parents, stepparents, or others with power grow up and become abusers themselves. Plenty of Israelis find it ironic and tragic that their government treats Palestinians nearly as badly as the Nazis treated their great-grandparents. Too many Americans are blind to the racism they tolerate because it does not directly interfere with their personal lives. Some are just clueless.

Too many easily fall into the hatred-on-the-rise that the new American fascists foment. The surge in violent hate crimes in the U.S., including anti-Semitic hate crimes, is no accident. It is part of the pattern of moral decay and political nihilism enabled by the political demagogues. That will only lead to more authoritarian politics and enable dictatorship to crush democracy unless the rest of us resist the hate.

Most of us, it seems, define our political orientation as liberal or conservative, often with a “moderate” caveat. But what do we mean by that, really? I am afraid that these labels have taken a real beating in recent decades, with the result that they have lost most of their meaning, if not all.

Wither Liberalism?

Let’s start with “liberal.” For a good while now, the word “liberal” has taken on the aura of an almost dirty word. Do you listen to talk radio or Fox News (which I prefer to call “Fixed News,” or “Fake News,” since it so heavily indulges not just in a particular political bias but also in falsehoods, innuendo, and ignoring facts, just like the president who follows it so closely)? There you will hear “liberal” used only scornfully. But, who are liberals, really?

Chris Hedges, in his 2010 book, Death of the Liberal Class, argues forcefully that the liberal class has abandoned its traditional political values, retaining only the name and rhetoric. The Democratic Party was once the bastion of liberal policies. However, through the latter half of the 20th Century, business interests controlled more and more of electoral politics as well as legislation itself.

Corporate interests and money-have long since taken control of the Democratic Party. Democratic politicians continued to spout liberal slogans. But they actually represented the corporate and investor classes as measured by most of their voting in both the House and Senate. Actual liberal citizens repeatedly came away frustrated by the party’s failure to implement liberal values touted in electoral campaigns. Thus, it is not surprising that while the views of a majority of Americans are generally liberal, the voting turnout in the U.S. is among the lowest of the industrialized nations.

Wither Conservatism?

So, similarly, what do we mean by the term, “conservative”? Well, here we have a different conundrum. “Conservative” has not taken on the negative connotations of “liberal.” However, the force of corporatized politics in the U.S. has similarly damaged it.

Proud Conservative

Most of us have some conservative values and some liberal values as well. We value stability and responsibility in our fellow citizens and try to represent them in our own behavior. We don’t always succeed, but we try. The political buzzword, “law and order” has exploited our conservative character by instilling the fear that criminals and others of questionable repute threaten the stability and security of our lives.

You might think that the conservative and liberal labels reflect directions of political, economic, and social policy favored by citizens who identify with those labels. You might also think that politicians who identify themselves by those labels attempt to implement policies that reflect those values. But, you would be wrong. Labels are often cover stories used by politicians to justify their actions, which may have entirely other sources.

The politicians gain their campaign contributions and other largess from mostly corporate lobbyists. Of course, the lobbyists advocate for political interests that benefit from the policy choices they persuade (bribe) senators and representatives to make. And, where do liberal or conservative values fit into this picture? Well, they don’t, really.

Rise of the Corporate State

In an extremely important, though not widely known study, Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page found that over many years, legislation favored the interests of corporate and business groups that lobbied politicians. The expressed interests of ordinary citizens and citizen groups representing the public interest rarely found expression in legislation. Their report, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12:3 (September 2014):564-581, provides strong empirical evidence that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”

In this context, it is difficult to surmise that the conservative and liberal ideas have any role in politics other than as cover stories to curry the favor of voters who identify with those labels. They certainly do not predict more than superficially the voting behavior of most politicians who use them.

On the first day of 2019, the Washington Post printed a story summarizing the numerous extreme signs of climate change in 2018. The list of extreme hurricanes, floods, wildfires, droughts and heat waves around the world of unprecedented intensity, impressed even the most cautious scientists.

Most climate scientists are unwilling to attribute a particular event directly to global warming. It is far too complicated for that. The heating of the atmosphere affects the entire climate system, so it influences patterns of weather everywhere rather than “causing” single events.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ~ Public Domain

Nothing is Normal Now

But, so many weather events now fall so far outside the normal range of weather that no other factor can explain it. They have grown more intense and frequent as humans pour more carbon into the atmosphere. That is why scientists are now willing to conclude that the frequency and intensity of such extreme events are due to global warming. Scientists are a conservative lot; they resist making claims without overwhelming evidence to support their assertions.

That is both good and bad. In ascertaining the validity of a finding, scientists rightly find it important that the evidence is overwhelmingly strong. Climate science builds its findings on the entire history of the physical sciences. They apply basic physics and chemistry to the extreme changes in climate conditions and events that have emerged over the past several decades. Global heat retention due to industrial-consumer economies pumping ever more carbon into the atmosphere is the scientifically undisputed cause of those changes.

However, scientists have preferred, for the most part, just to report the facts and the projections of change into the future that they have concluded are justified by the evidence. They leave it up to the public and the politicians to develop policies to respond to the dangers inherent in the facts they report.

Power of Propaganda

Not only have climate scientists projections proved much more optimistic than later facts revealed, but the whole process is accelerating because of previously unaccounted for positive feedback loops. These include darker arctic seas absorbing more sunlight than the white sea-ice that has melted, and melting tundra releasing methane, to name just two.

Politician and citizen alike easily ignore extremely dangerous conditions projected into the distant future. Now, however, the most recent research reveals we have little more than a dozen years to reduce net carbon emissions to near zero to avoid catastrophic consequences for societies all over the world. The U.S. government’s most recent Climate Assessment Report concludes that the damage from extreme climate events will cost hundreds of billions of dollars in the near future.

At the beginning of this past October, a special report by the IPCC revealed very disturbing findings. At current rates of carbon emissions (which have not slowed), sea rise from melting polar ice caps and the giant Greenland glacier will inundate coastal cities worldwide. Droughts and poverty will intensify. The data from numerous studies projecting the catastrophic consequences of inaction just keep piling in.

Science and Political Action

However, as the decades pass, more and more scientists have come to recognize that propaganda has effectively countered the facts. The fossil-fuel industries and their lackeys in Congress, extremist talk-radio, and partisan cable “news” outlets continue to dominate the politics of global warming. The climate-denying president attempted to bury the U.S. Climate Assessment Report by releasing it the day after Thanksgiving, a “dead” news day when so many consumers were out shopping for bargains in the industrial-consumer economy that is the primary cause of global warming.

At some point soon, the overwhelming impact of devastating events will overcome the propaganda of politically motivated climate denial. The problem is that soon it may be too late to prevent some of the most catastrophic consequences for planet and people, which humanity could have avoided if policies based on the factual evidence of science had prevailed over counter-factual propaganda.

Two years after the 2016 presidential election, the Fascist Reality Show now emanating from the White House is very real. Yet, too many “liberals” and moderate Americans are complacent, if bemused. Most Americans see it in one of two ways. First, the “moderate” liberals especially enjoy scoffing with Rachael Maddow at the absurd and bombastic lying about almost everything, and the gross display of ignorance and incompetence. Others, some of whom even voted for the narcissistic sociopath (who I have called “the empty clown suit”) have reached a level of disgust that they have turned off politics entirely.

Michael Moore saw it coming.

Michael Moore had predicted the Trump win because he understands the plight of the American worker and his anger. Moore recognized that many Americans desperately needed to express their frustration with the two-party monopoly exploiting them from the nation’s capital. So, they threw a political “Molotov cocktail” at the electoral process that represented the corrupt system that failed to represent them. Once the Dem’s took out Bernie, they voted for the only remaining candidate who claimed to be an outsider.

Electoral Breakdown

However, Trump’s status as an outsider was one-dimensional as well as an economic lie. The New York financial elite from whom he had desperately sought acceptance for decades despised him. The Republican Party elite did not take him seriously until the primary voters changed their minds. The Democratic Party corporatist insiders cut off the only progressive populist challenger from outside of their establishment-controlled nomination process. So, populist tendencies turned to the only remaining claimant to the hopes of the ignored white working former middle class.

Many who would have voted for Bernie, instead chose the man who, back in the 1980s, investigative reporter David Kay Johnson had called the modern-day P.T. Barnum. But Trump’s demagoguery expertly played upon a sore spot in the psyche of racists, white nationalists, and outright neo-Nazis across America. He consciously ignited a spark of legitimacy for scapegoating and bigotry to build his base and win the primary election.

Then the maximal leader of the resentful and hate filled economic outsiders upped the ante. He recognized the growing population of former middle-class white males “and the women who loved them.” He callously exploited their growing resentment of lost aspirations and that of the much younger crowd who had already lost any hope of ever reaching the economic security their parents once had.

Trump incited violence in those who attended his rallies. He encouraged the racism and resentment against minorities and immigrants beginning to explode among formerly fringe groups of violent right-wing alienated youth in America. It is its striking and should be terrifying to see the parallel to similar risings of bullyboys in Europe.

Recognizing Fascism in the Making

The exact same forces of fear, resentment, and hatred fomented by Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s are at work and growing in the U.S. and Europe today. These are the leading indicators of growing instability of the mass society of alienated individuals that the corporate growth economy has created and failed to support in its relentless quest for the profits of expansion. Timothy Snyder in his small but powerful book, Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, offers a guide for citizen action to restore our democracy.
All the warning signs are all there.

Yes, it can happen here. The Fascist Reality Show is real. We must take up the fight for democracy, or we will lose it.

“I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” ~ Anonymous

When does authority end? Well, authority ends when people believe that it no longer exists. That is because authority is not a thing one possesses; authority is a relationship in which the members of a system acknowledge the holder of power as legitimate. Power can be held without authority but is inherently weaker and unstable when illegitimate. Power without legitimacy can be exercised only by force.

For example, in a formally democratic constitutional political system, such as that in the U.S.A., the very election of a president is the agreed upon process for installing a president in office. It is the only legitimate means by which the man (or someday woman) can assume the office. The inauguration is the ritual that legitimizes the turning over of the executive authority of incumbency to the person who won the election.

Chaos Central

Of course, we have experienced growing concerns over the legitimacy of the electoral process itself, but most people view the process as legitimate even though flawed. Yet, the flaws seem to have grown significantly in recent years, with the more extreme gerrymandering and voter suppression. Still, most people accept the results, if grudgingly.

Once in office, a president has a wide range of options as to his behavior in executing the duties of the office. The three-branch system of government allows a lot of interpretation in the administration of laws. Administrative policies may even twist the meaning in how a president implements a law, with little consequence beyond complaints.

In the present instance, the president appointed the “principal officers of the executive departments” (Section 4, Amendment XXV, U.S. Constitution) that is, the members of his cabinet, with the sole purpose of having those officers dismantle the administration of existing laws that do not favor the corporations and the rich.

Naturally, many people have challenged the legitimacy of such actions. Many current lawsuits challenge the actions of Trump’s cabinet members on the basis that they have violated rather than administered the laws passed by Congress. That is because such actions are the equivalent of re-writing or nullifying such laws, which, of course, is the sole prerogative of the Congress.

When a president routinely takes such illegitimate actions, the government may experience a constitutional crisis. That is because presidential actions meant to avoid or roll back the implementation of laws passed by Congress violate the constitutional principle of separation of powers. As we all know, such practices have become extremely commonplace in the presidential administration of Donald J. Trump.

Our current president evidently views the office he holds as equivalent to that of a CEO of a private family business, a patriarch, or a mob boss. But, of course, that is just the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, too many citizens also have little knowledge or respect for these constitutional principles.

Decay of Authority

This president has taken so many illegitimate actions that I will not list them here. Putting aside the perverse peculiarities of personality, a strong sense has grown that the man is incapable of exercising the powers of the office without putting the nation in great danger, especially in international relations, domestic security, and in denying climate science.

Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear: Trump in the White House,” (already widely quoted before reaching the bookstores) has already caused great consternation by revealing numerous instances that indicate several grounds for considering the president to be unfit for office. Of course, Trump proclaimed it a work of fiction, despite Woodward’s long-standing solid reputation for basing his books on strong evidence and multiple reliable sources.

Far more damning, however, is the anonymously authored op-ed piece in the New York Times, titled, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” Written by one or more high-level members of the administration, the author(s) claim that “I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.’ It describes a White House in full disarray as members of the administration try to cover, block, or undo many “dangerous impulses” and erratic actions of a man who is out of control in too many ways to enumerate. We can safely assume that The Times would not have taken such an unprecedented step without fully vetting the source.

Whatever one’s political viewpoint, the question of whether the man is unfit, recklessly dangerous, just too mentally unstable, or otherwise “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” (Amendment XXV, Section 4, U.S. Constitution) then some means of removing him from power is necessary. When the inner circle of the White House finds it necessary to remove papers from his desk, diffuse his attempts to lash out at the world in various ways, or when a top general just does not follow orders given on a dangerous whim, a genuine constitutional crisis is already in play.

So far, the Republican right in Congress has gotten its legislative way because the president consistently and with mean spirit unwinds many laws an regulations meant to protect citizens and environments while affording the super-rich and giant corporations obscene tax cuts. But at some point, the present trend of increasing chaos will force their hand.

The End of the Line

Whether before or after the mid-term elections, the outrage of ordinary Republicans, independents and Democrats alike will force the hand of self-absorbed politicians in Congress. They will by then see the end of their free ride on the horizon as voters protest their continued inaction. The talk of annulling Trump’s election is building as Mueller indicts more of Trump’s associates. “Anonymous” even mentions invoking the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove him from office. Impeachment would be the weaker approach since it would replace him with Pence, the corrupt henchman elected along with him, and leave cabinet members and all the insane executive orders and dangerous actions in place.

Annulment of the election would be the more difficult path, but the best way to reverse much of the damage already done. The growing evidence of illegal tampering with the election, not only by the Russians but by Republican campaign officials, cries out for annulment. After all, the authority of this president has ended.

Now it is time to rise to the occasion of this unprecedented constitutional crisis and clean up the president’s mess. Many politicians will have to break out of their established habits and act like statesmen. Taking the right path will not be easy, but it may save the republic.

The GOP Pimps are playing Trollop Trump, like no other patsy in history. In that sense, you could say that they are colluding with the Russians. They still despise him but hide it since he has become their cash cow. But Trump is a double patsy, after all. The Russians have played him ever since his disastrous casino failures of the 1970s left him on the brink of bankruptcy when no legitimate bank would touch his toxic financial mess. That left the Kremlin-linked Russian Mafia and their front banks a great opportunity to “rescue” and indebt him to them simultaneously. David Kay Johnson has documented Trump’s brash blunders and blatant corruption for decades including his more recent escapades in The Making of Donald Trump (2016). Johnson describes his ‘presidential’ destruction of American Democracy in It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America (2018).

A Hustler’s Trail

Now, Craig Unger compiles diverse historical sources documenting Trump’s corrupt history with his own current research on Trump’s subservience to Putin in his new book, House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia (2018). U.S. Trumpists, who have fallen for his demagoguery and seem more like reality-show fans than political actors, dismiss the overwhelming historical record of corruption as mere liberal bias as they revel in the brash violation of political norms by the Fake Outsider.

Trollop Trump and his Republican pimps and enablers have one thing in common and it is not patriotism, it is plunder. They are collecting the booty from his prostitution of the presidency. It is true that Trump was a political outsider. Multiple independent sources confirm that he was (and is) despised by the financial and real-estate elites of New York, who find his narcissistic mob-boss pretensions to status among its elite distasteful. But that does not diminish his impulse to act in the interests of the American plutocracy (to which he so fervently aspires) against the American people.

Both Trollop Trump and the Republican Party elite, as well as his Russian Mafia handlers, brazenly engage in high-stakes Trumpery. (“Trumpery,” if you had not heard, derives from the Middle English “trumpery” and ultimately from the Middle French “tromper,” meaning “to deceive.” See https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trumpery.)

Trump is a patsy for the Russians. We do not know all the details yet, but his behavior is a clear giveaway. Helsinki is but the most obvious of a consistent pattern of defensive subservience to Putin and his regime. Just because the Hillary Democrats are obsessed with blaming the Russians for her failure, does not make the Russians any less guilty of manipulating the American electorate through hacking, trolls, bots, and conspiring with the Trump campaign. Russian coordination with Manifort, Gates, and now revealed with Republican operative and lobbyist W. Samuel Patten who just plead guilty to acting as an unregistered foreign agent, is undeniable. Of course, claims of “witch hunt” will continue as the evidence accumulates.

The Republican House and Senate pimp out Trump’, who cons the status-anxious men of the downwardly Mobil white working and former middle classes, while he plays them all in service to the oligarchs and mobsters of Wall Street and Moscow he admires so.

Triangle of Trumpery

Never mind the narcissism. Never mind the psychopathy/sociopathy. Never mind the sexual predation. Never mind the traitorous personality disorders of the man who demands absolute loyalty from associates whom he routinely throws under the bus. Never mind even his pandering to Putin and his Kremlin-connected oligarch benefactors — neither Manifort nor Cohen can cover for him now. After all, they are really just like him, though without as much brash bluster, bumbling, and lack of impulse control. And, after all, it is he who is doing the bidding of both GOP plutocrats and Russian Oligarchs. Never mind the Republican and Kremlin pimps who own this puppet of power. They are the smooth talking pimps and he is their garish Trollop. Instead, think of the global human consequences of this political tragic comedy.

So, who wins in this insane high-stakes international-casino puppet show?

So far. the American plutocrats, the Russian dictatorship and affiliated oligarch-mob, and the international criminal corporate conspiracy to plunder the planet’s remaining resources before climate chaos, political pandemonium, and societal collapse put an end to it all. That’s who.

But, never mind all that. Just sip your Starbucks mega-latte, read the sports page, and drive off in your SUV, pretending you live in a democracy because you still have all those consumer choices.